Disclaimer: I completed Valkyrie Elysium on the hardest difficulty 'Valkyrie', so my thoughts are based on how the game feels to play on that difficulty. It's possible you can get some enjoyment if you lower the difficulty, but I found the game to be either too easy or too hard.

So with that said...

DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME ON VALKYRIE MODE - IT IS POORLY DESIGNED AND HORRIBLY UNBALANCED

I'm a sucker for action games with JRPG art design and when I heard this game had some Team Ninja people behind it, I wanted to atleast try it.

Now onto my review...

Difficulty: The hard mode is too easy, the Valkyrie (hardest) mode is one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had in gaming. The only way to beat this game on Valkyrie is by abusing the summon system and praying to the RNG gods that the enemies attack your summons and not you. Every enemy is a bullet sponge on steroids that can two-shot you at any moment. The amount of times I died because my character got knocked onto the ground or the camera obscured my vision was insane. The final boss is one of the most god-awful encounters I've come across in a game and as I was wiping to him repeatedly I was legitimately Googling if anyone had beat him on Valkyrie since there is a way to "finish" the game by talking to an NPC bypassing the boss.

Bugs: There are two gamebreaking bugs I can't look past - both of which can and will result in softlocks. One is the checkpoint system is broken, meaning, if you kill an elite enemy and it drops health/soul gauge, and you die on the NEXT wave of enemies, if you load that checkpoint, it doesn't remember you picked up the health/soul gauge from before. This can be the difference between clearing a section and reaching the next save point or not. You also have to reopen every chest & break every box/barrel each time you die.

The second bug is enemies get stuck on objects and you can't target them while the area is blocked off. This happened several times in my playthrough.

If you're on Valkyrie difficulty, you're desperately trying to get to the next save point at all times, and the last thing you need in an unbalanced mode like this is the game fighting against you.

Story: The story is some of the most uninspired schlop you'll come across up until the last chapter where it gets slightly interesting. By that point, it's too little too late.

Combat: It runs on an elemental stagger system which can be satisfying to stun a horde of enemies but the lack of animation cancelling kills the combat system. On the highest difficulty, you're committing suicide by trying full combos because you get locked into a long animation leaving yourself open to getting two-shot by any enemy. The hit detection is questionable at best, especially when you're fighting the oversized bosses.


One more nitpick: The game doesn't let itself breathe. There are waves of enemies every 10 meters and there are so many times where I wanted the game to just let me walk around and explore the environment and catch my breath. By the end of the game I was so happy to be done with it.

I cannot recommend this game, even if it's on sale.